


Love Written in Strange Characters

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Courtly Love, Cultural Differences, F/M, Gen, Love, Multicultural Relationship, interracial couple, language barriers, language lessons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 11:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14831403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Roald and Shinko write their love in strange characters. Set during the Progress in Squire.





	Love Written in Strange Characters

Love Written in Strange Characters

Shinko’s hand shook slightly, threatening to smudge the ink in the letter she was penning to her beloved brother back in the Yamani Islands, when she recognized with a jolt that her betrothed was standing just inside her tent flap. She was about to throw down her quill with almost unseemly haste and rise from the writing desk she was kneeling before when Roald indicated with a gracious incline of his head that she should remain where she was. 

“I asked your guards not to announce me.” He smiled as he answered Shinko’s internal question about why the sentries posted outside her tent had neglected to warn her of his arrival. “I didn’t want to disturb you while you were writing, Shinko.” 

He was, Shinko saw, studying with fascination the precise, beautiful characters she had written on the scroll before her. It was, of course, a breach of etiquette to look at writing not addressed to oneself in both the Eastern Lands and the Yamani Islands. However, the offense was mitigated by the fact that Shinko was well-aware that her betrothed couldn’t read or speak the Yamani language yet had been enthralled with the characters that comprised it ever since she had explained to him that the Yamani poetry she translated for him lost much of its beauty because much of its aesthetic appeal was in the shape of the characters when they were combined to create breathtaking images. Yamani poetry was a poetry of sight and sound that was impossible to translate into Common though Shinko tried for her future husband’s sake. 

“Why do you write the characters down the page instead of across it as we do in the Eastern Lands?” Roald’s forehead furrowed as he knelt beside her, puzzling over what he perceived as her strange method of writing. 

“Why do you write across the page instead of down it as we do in the Yamani Islands?” Shinko lifted a delicately manicured eyebrow. 

“We’re heirs to the Old Ones so we do as the Old Ones did.” Roald shrugged. “I don’t have a better explanation than that.” 

“We write from the top of the page because the top of the page is like a man’s head.” Shinko tapped his hair lightly with her quill to emphasize her point. “As a man’s head is his beginning so too do we in the Yamani Islands start writing at the top of the paper.” 

“I see.” Roald did seem to have absorbed the lesson as he nodded. Pulling a piece of blank blotting parchment toward him, he asked, quiet as the whisper of pen against scroll, “Will you teach me to write your name in Yamani?” 

Obligingly, Shinko slipped her small hand around his larger one and gently guided his fingers through the for him foreign characters of her name written in Yamani. His breath was a warm breeze wafting in her ears that brought cherries to her cheeks, and his skin beneath hers made every nerve within her tingle. 

“My name is formed from three characters.” Shinko was grateful that there was no quaver in her voice to betray how overwhelmed she was by his touch. “The character for light followed by the one that represents cricket and then finally by the one that denotes my status as a member of the imperial family.” 

“The word cricket is part of your name?” Roald sounded as if he supposed she were pranking him for her own amusement. 

“Crickets are a symbol of good fortune in the Yamani Islands as they are regarded as heralds of spring.” Shinko’s eyes crinkled as she noticed that Yuki and Haname, who had retreated to the corner of the tent to provide Roald and Shinko with as much privacy as propriety would permit, were grinning behind upraised fans. 

“That is fitting because I consider you a symbol of my good fortune.” Roald squeezed her fingers as she finished coaxing him through the writing of her name in Yamani. “How would you write my name in Yamani?” 

“We use the character for strength followed by the one for leader.” Shinko curled his hand through the flowing, perfect characters and thought that she would have added the ones for duty, justice, and love if she had been the one assigned to translate Roald’s name into Yamani for the first time because Roald represented all those elusive qualities made tangible for her.


End file.
